Devil's Vow (Devil's Martyrs MC Book 5) Read online

  Melody followed Enrique out of the seedy bar, ignoring the feel of eyes skimming over her revealing dress. She didn’t say a word as they walked across the parking lot to where his expensive car was parked, out of place next to the sleek motorcycles and pick-up trucks that dotted the rest of the lot.

  She bit her tongue, not sure what type of mood Enrique would be in, such a short time after his outburst. His mood could flip on a dime or he could sulk for days, angry and bitter and mean.

  But Melody was surprised when he stepped close, sliding his arm around her shoulders and tugging her weight against his muscular chest.

  “Don’t worry, angel. I wouldn’t let that man near you. I won’t ever let anyone touch you. You’re mine. You know that, right? You belong to me.”

  His voice was soft. Not the quiet of a blade, but of whispered words and featherlight kisses. The sudden shift of his mood caught Melody off-guard and she gave a hurried nod. He opened up the passenger’s side door, waiting for her to get in before closing it behind her.

  She had been taken aback by the odd moment of sweetness, as she always was. It was moments like those that make her question her doubts about him. Melody clenched her hands together in her lap, tugging the short dress down, as she thought about the bruises that weren’t still quite faded, hiding beneath her artfully done make up.

  No, she couldn’t let him get under her skin. She had to stay strong. To hold a part of herself back. Or else she’d risk losing herself to him all over again. For over a month now she’d been planning how to get away, how to get out from under his thumb. But that meant she couldn’t stay in West Texas. Hell, she might have to leave the entire state.

  Enrique had connections spread out all over the area and, if she ran and he caught her… Melody cut off the thought before she could finish it. It was too painful. She didn’t even want to contemplate what the outcome would be if that happened. She just had to make sure it didn’t.

  As Enrique drove through the desert, Melody sat in silence, but her thoughts raced. How had she gotten there? So scared. So weak. Everything had spiraled so fast, she felt so out of control.

  She closed her eyes and remembered that first fight as if it was happening now instead of months ago. The feel of his fist connecting with her cheek for the first time. How shocked she’d been.

  Enrique had apologized immediately. He’d begged for her forgiveness. Had told her it was just the stress of the deal going south with the Devil’s Martyrs that had him on edge and that it would never happen again.

  But then it had. Again and again. He’d taken away her freedoms first, so she had nowhere to go, and then he’d take his anger out on her whenever his temper and jealousy were triggered. Which was happening more and more often.

  One night he’d come home and couldn’t find her. She’d been taking a bath. She wasn’t allowed to leave the palatial home without Enrique. He’d been so full of anger that he’d dragged her from the giant soaking tub by her hair and pulled her into another room.

  He’d held her down as he’d tattooed his name her chest.

  She had screamed and cried, had tried to fight against him, but it had just fueled his rage to terrifying heights. She’d never seen him that out of control before. And, after, she’d laid on the bed, curled up in on herself sobbing silently as he slept beside her.

  The next morning Enrique had woken up, kissed her on the cheek and smiled at her like nothing had happened the night before. That was the morning she’d started planning her escape. Stealing and scrounging away whatever money she could get her hands on. But it wasn’t much, not nearly enough.

  “Damn it!” Enrique’s sudden furious curse cut through her thoughts like a hot knife and Melody jumped, turning towards him in fright.

  “It didn’t make sense,” he muttered to himself, his brows slashing low over his dark eyes as he drove faster and faster. “I didn’t understand why Lucas suddenly showed an interest in you. You put him up to it, didn’t you? You teased him? What did you say to him? What did you promise him?”

  “Wh–what? No, Enrique, I swear – I never said a word to him,” Melody muttered in shock and fear.

  That sharp light of jealousy was back in his eyes and, this time, it was all directed at her.

  “Why else would he say that, all of a sudden like that, if you hadn’t given him encouragement? What the fuck did you say to him?”

  The words were an incoherent scream by the end and all Melody could do was sit there, trembling like a leaf, shaking her head in denial, and wonder what the hell he was going to do to her now.

  “I don’t believe you. You’re nothing but a liar. A liar and a slut.” Enrique said, that softness back in his voice that terrified her even more.

  Suddenly, the sound of squealing brakes filled the air along with a cloud of dust.

  “Get out.”

  “What?” Melody asked dumbly.

  “Get out. GET OUT! GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY CAR!” Enrique screamed once more, his hands hard on her arms as he pushed her against the passenger door.

  She grasped at the handle, popping the door open and tumbling out before he could leave any more bruises. Already, more were forming to add to the ones that hadn’t quite faded.

  “You’re…You’re just going to leave me out here?” Melody whispered.

  Enrique shot her a sneer.

  “Let’s see how you like spending a night out in the desert by yourself. Then you won’t be so eager to fuck anything that moves.”

  “No, Enrique. I swear I didn’t…”

  But she didn’t get to finish her sentence. He was already driving away, slamming his foot down on the gas so that another burst of dust and gravel shot at her.

  Melody threw a hand over her face to shield herself from the debris, not lowering it again until the sound of the expensive engine faded into a distant buzz. Only then did she put her hand down and open her eyes, taking in the rapidly darkening sky overhead and the empty desert surrounding her.

  With a trembling breath, she wrapped her arms around herself, picked a direction, and started walking.

  Chapter 2

  Christian ‘Pretty Boy’ Mires trudged out towards the big, crumbling building everyone called the ‘barn’. It wasn’t really. It might have been at some point, but really it was a warehouse the Devil’s Martyrs used to house drugs and other shipments before moving them on.

  It was empty at the moment because of their fallout with a local drug kingpin, but Christian just shrugged it off. He wasn’t involved in that part of the gang much. He wasn’t that worried about it, even though his father was.

  Hub Mires had only been vice president of the Devil’s Martyrs for less than a year and he was still nervous about losing the respect of the crew. He was worried about keeping everyone in line and in control. And, and without money and work coming in, the crew members were getting restless.

  His father had been brought on as second-in-command by a man named Bones. He’d taken over as president of the crew after the older president, some crazy fucker named Capone, had gotten arrested along with a good number of other high-ranking crew members

  Things had been shaken up for a while with the change of power, members of the gang fighting each other for any scrap of power they could wrestle away from anyone else.

  Not Christian though. He was one of the younger patch members at twenty-five, but it wasn’t just age that separated him from the rest of the crew.

  He shrugged uncomfortably at the train of his thoughts, but that didn’t stop it from barreling further down the tracks. He was different from the others. He knew that. His father thought he was a fuck-up. That he was soft. That he would never grow up to be the man Hub Mires expected, all ice-cold and tough, willing to do whatever necessary for the crew even if it meant hurting others. Or worse.

  ‘Pretty Boy’, the other crew members called him, taunting him. Christian hated the nickname. He knew he’d earned it with his startling blue eyes and light blond hair, but every
time one of the members called him ‘boy’ he could see his father cringe. Because that’s how Hub saw him: still just a dumb little boy instead of the man he knew he was.

  Christian knew that his father was ruthless. He would take what he wanted and didn’t care one whit for anyone who got in his way. And he didn’t take shit from anyone. That was one of the reasons Bones had promoted him to second-in-command. Hub had knocked all of Drifter’s teeth out to get the position.

  That wasn’t the only scuffle that had happened over the past year, though the members weren’t fighting themselves as much anymore. The whole gang had been in chaos for a few months. It had kept the men distracted for a little while, but now it was starting to wear thin and everyone was growing restless.

  Christian glanced over at the ‘barn’. From the outside that was exactly what it looked like. A crumbling, run-down, abandoned old barn. The Devil’s Martyrs safehouse was in the middle-of-nowhere, Texas. There were three safehouses that the gang had stashed away, and Hub personally ran this one.

  From the highway, it just looked like a long abandoned old farmhouse. It wasn’t until you got closer that you could even see the barn itself, hidden by a sparse line of shrubby hardy trees, or what it really held inside.

  Christian’s father had sent him out to the barn to make sure it was secure, but he knew he was stalling. He was in no rush to go back in there with Hub all in a lather over the lack of jobs and the fight that had broken out earlier that day when two of the members had gotten fallen-down drunk and tried to tear each other apart.

  They needed to plan the next job, the next operation. They needed to get the men off their asses before they all killed each other. But Hub wouldn’t listen to him. He just thought Christian was an idiot who didn’t know what he was talking about.

  Christian shook his head, muttering angrily to himself as he walked around to the back of the barn. Maybe his father was right. Maybe he wasn’t as tough or mean or willing to hurt others as he was, but he knew how people worked. He could understand their motivations, their fears and desires.

  He slowed as he made his way to the large fenced-in area that made up the kennels he’d put together behind the back of the barn. There were four separate crates that he’d insulated to keep the animals warm, but luckily the weather stayed hot enough in Texas that he didn’t have to worry about them freezing to death at night, even though it could get chilly. No, he was much more worried about heat stroke during the middle of the day, but his father had refused to let the animals inside.

  Christian shook his head again. They just didn’t understand each other, him and his father. They had totally different views of the world, even though Hub had tried to beat him into submission, to going along with whatever he wanted.

  He loved his father, in a distant sort of way, and Christian knew his father loved him in his own gruff sort of way. But they would never see eye-to-eye. Not about how to run the crew or about Christian’s ‘hobby’, as he called.

  As soon as Christian walked around the corner, three enormous pit bulls rushed towards him, greeting him with goofy grins and barks of happiness. He knelt, petting them all as they pressed their wiggling bodies against him.

  They jumped on top of each other to get to him, and he let out a laugh at their antics.

  He and those animals understood each other perfectly. In fact, he’d always had an affinity for animals of all shapes and sizes for as long as he could remember.

  Christian smiled, feeling himself relax for the first time all day, as he rubbed their bellies and checked that they had enough food and water to last them through the night. Finally, he had to push the rambunctious dogs away so that he could make his way over to the fourth crate.

  He walked slowly, careful not to spook the young pup that was curled up on itself inside with a bandage on one of its front paws. The pit bull puppy was only a year old, but the poor thing had been trained to fight and had scars crisscrossing its face and snout, all the way down its chest and front legs.

  Christian had to bite back the anger that always filled him when he saw any animal mistreated, as he crouched, staying quiet, not making any sudden movements as he crept forward.

  The pup growled low and mean-sounding but let Christian close enough to peek at the injury. He had a broken leg and Christian had had a hell of a time fixing it. The dog was so scared he had snapped at anyone who got within range of his teeth. But slowly, Christian was winning him over, showing him that he could be trusted.

  Christian was careful as he examined the still healing leg and felt a surge of satisfaction when he saw that it was starting to look better. It had been rank with infection at first, but the infection was finally gone and he was pretty sure the pup wouldn’t lose his leg.

  He knew his father didn’t understand, but healing and helping this animal brought him far more happiness that running drugs or beating up rivals. Christian had gotten into his own fair share of fights, but it was usually to defend someone else. He rarely instigated one. He knew the rest of the crew didn’t understand him either.

  He was just different. He didn’t know why. He always had been, ever since he’d been a child.

  Christian closed his eyes for a moment as he remembered his mom. He pictured her as she had been when he was just a kid, before the cancer took her. She was like him. Kind, softhearted. Always finding strays and nursing them back to health.

  He always wondered what she’d seen in his father. Hub was the opposite of kind and softhearted. The man was as mean and cold as they came, and that’s what he expected every man to be.

  Christian knew that why his dad was so hard on him. Because he thought enough fights, enough violence, enough pressure would toughen him up. In reality, all it did was drive him further away, but Hub would never admit that he was wrong.

  “Christian! Get your ass back in here!”

  “Speak of the devil,” Christian muttered to himself as his father’s rough voice echoed across the yard. The sun had well and truly set, and evening was starting to fall. With one last belly rub for the dogs, Christian let out a deep sigh and turned to trudge back inside.

  Chapter 3

  Melody shivered as darkness fell around her, stealing the heat of the day and making her breath condense in a cloud of white mist with every panicked exhale. She tried to keep her composure, but her feet were aching from walking on the uneven dirt and gravel country roads in the high heels that Enrique insisted she wore.

  Her legs were tired and growing numb from the chill in the air, exposed as they were by the barely-there dress. The rest of her wasn’t faring much better. At least her long, dark brown hair was still pinned up in its bun rather than getting tangled and knotted in the wind. She doubted she was going to find anywhere to brush it out anytime soon, let alone some place to sleep for the night.

  It was odd, though. As precarious as her situation was, she was filled with a lightness. It was as if some terribly heavy weight had been lifted off her shoulders, and she knew it was because, for the first time in almost a year, she felt free.

  No one there to tell her what to do, what to eat, how to dress, what to feel. No one constantly berating or hurting her.

  She was free.

  The thought startled a laugh out of her, which was caught by the chill wind and carried away into the night. That lightness grew inside her like a bubble, getting bigger and bigger until it popped on another burst of laughter.

  She stared up at the stars overhead. Out here, surrounded by nothing but desert and a few shrubby trees, with no lights or electricity to block her view, it looked like the entire universe was shining above her.

  Melody marveled at the wild beauty of it all. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d just looked up at the stars.

  Living on the streets, she’d had plenty of nights spent sleeping under nothing but a bench or whatever cover she could find, but most of those nights she’d been too distracted by hunger or pain to notice anything else.

  She
knew she’d have to find food soon, and some sort of shelter. Her survival instincts were already pushing her to get as much water as she could. Melody knew from experience that the body could last days, even weeks more without food. But, without water, everything started to shut down.

  So, she kept moving her feet, one in front of the other, hoping that she would find at least a gas station or a motel off the highway. Someplace she could stop for the night.

  But the hours crawled by and still there was nothing on the horizon but the dark indigo night sky above. The sense of freedom remained, but the panic was getting harder and harder to hold at bay.

  She was nearly on top of the old farmstead before she realized it. Melody stepped past a towering group of overgrown weeds and shrubs and could just make out what looked like a large shack in the distance.